Finding Freedom to Create

To be free to create is to be unencumbered, to enter into the creative act without hesitation, without doubt, without self-consciousness. This haven is like a waterfall streaming in continuous harmony with an unending source and unlimited potential. Our supply of creative energy originates from within the essence of whom we are, that place of uniqueness that comes with us the day we are born. It is our individuality.
This is the complete I am within each of us. From our birth moment forward, no matter what happens to us we remain I am. Among the seven billion humans inhabiting planet earth, you are the only one among them who is you. You are your own creative source….
Artists are born knowing how to compose and when that knowing is allowed to unfold, it gives life to everything the artist creates. Just as without the need for a musical score a musician is can play by ear when a tune is heard, the visual artist has an intuitive ability to arrange and build a visual composition….
Our Seeing Awareness
Understanding the visual language is already available to us. It’s in our eyes. We use it all the time even if we’re not registering that we’re using it.
If we’re not aware of its power, most likely it’s because of chatter in our brains that wants to label and place a judgment value on everything we see. But it’s when we can look at a sunset without calling it a sunset or without thinking it beautiful that we really see it….
Visual Paths as Strategies
Paths give us passage, opening for us a way to move, providing for us a direction to follow. In the arts, we use paths to lead the way through a work and to keep the attention within the work: in music we use a progression of sounds and rhythms, note by note, chord by chord, and in painting we use movements and rhythms created by how we place images and elements of emphasis to create a direction for the eye to follow.
Both nature and our imaginations abound with subjects worth painting, but sometimes abundance comes at a price. If we put too much visual information into a single work of art, our viewers won’t know where to look. It’s like throwing them into the wilderness with no way out. But if we select and place those images so that they form a pathway, we create a route enhanced with places to explore and moments to rest.
When Not to Think
Conscious thinking must precede the creation. It must be a part of the learning process. It all goes back to the right-brain/left-brain: the right brain only can function at its maximum when the left brain has functioned at its maximum. The left brain learns a skill, principle, or technique until it becomes a habit, which is filed in the unconscious mind. The right brain then has this stuff accessible to use while engaging in its creative activity. The left brain identifies, the right brain responds and expresses.
It is healthy to make ourselves aware of the composing generators, the analytical activities, freeing an artist to be more creative as long as conscious thought of those generators doesn’t interfere and stifle the process.
What we want in the long run is holism: we want the muse to guide us as we respond directly, but we also want to know what we're doing so we don’t have to interrupt the creative process to try to figure out what to do next. …
Creative Freedom Is Imminent
Any creation, even the universe within which planet earth rotates, depends upon everything within working together in order for even its smallest element to function without stress. Anything that interferes, whether a flat tire on a Porsche or dead battery in a smoke detector, slows down and sometimes endangers the welfare of whatever is depending upon it. The same is the nature of the creative process.
Everything that is true for even the most minute living cell is equally true for the entire universe. The creative process within each individual human is no exception. Five decades of teaching has convinced me that it takes very little to get that creative process working when folks can ditch the brain chatter and connect to the inner child that knows only the innocence of doing without fear of being judged. If we can muster that, all we need is to add to the doing is more of the how-to. When each how-to becomes so habitual that we no longer have to think about it, we can add another how-to if we choose, and then yet another. There is no end our potential once we get started….